Of Official English sillyness, painful grammatical errors, and cooked circles of Freedom-Flour
Today, I’d like to discuss a post made on a news forum that I stumbled across recently. I’ll reproduce it in its entirety below, and then discuss it. (Here’s the original source):
Speak English, Your In America Now
We, the Legal American workers of the USA, need to stand together NOW, to keep English as our only native language.
Foreigners are saturating the USA & are slowly trying to modify our national language to include Spanish, so it will be easier for them to live & work in this country.
Qualified US citizens who need to support their families are being refused employment in their own country because they don’t speak Spanish. This is happening on a daily basis. The unemployment rate is up and the government offices are making suggestions that we learn Spanish so we can get jobs.
This is wrong & something needs to be done. If we do nothing, in 10 years we will all need to know Spanish and have to push 2 to hear it in English! Please help stop the madness before it goes any farther.
We can not allow any modification of our national language.
We need stronger laws which require resident & citizen applicants to learn English in order to live & work in the USA. If not, than these companies that deal with non speaking English patrons, need to hire an interpreter and pay them what the average interpreter makes. To force the “legal” US citizen to speak a new language is Discrimination based on language.
We need new laws created to protect the English speaking citizens of the USA from any discrimination (like employment, housing, etc.)
Amnesty should only be given if the parties are willing to learn English and help change their family members coming over or who are already here.
Petition to NOT modify our native language to include any foreign language
Petition for stronger laws requiring all residents & citizens to learn & speak English in order to live & work in the USA.
Petition for new laws protecting US citizens who are refused employment in the USA simply because they do nospeak a foreign language.
Petition for new laws protecting the English speaking citizens of the USA from any form of discrimination (employment, housing, etc.).
We would like to thank Verizon Wireless for taking the first steps in realizing that we shouldn’t have to push one for English, it should be a given.If you agree, take a stand & sign the petition.
Painful grammatical errors
Here at LinguisticMystic, I do my best never to mock people for grammatical mistakes. I’ll certainly comment on them, and when they’re particularly funny, I’ll share a laugh. However, in general, I think that one’s ability to adhere to an arbitrary set of “rules” set out for us by the richest group of language users shouldn’t be a category of judgment.
As many of you likely noticed, the author of this post mixed up the 2nd person possessive (your) and the identical-sounding yet differently spelled contraction of “you are” (you’re). This is often a problem because, as I said, they sound identical when spoken aloud, but in writing, there’s a very large difference between the possessive (”I saw your mom”) and the contraction (”You’re a mom”).
Now, I’m not pointing this out to attack the author as a person, or suggest that she’s uneducated. Instead, I’m pointing it out because this is a wonderful example of one of the few times when having impeccable grammar IS relevant and necessary. In some contexts, a badly placed grammatical error can significantly injure an argument, and the author’s your/you’re mixup here is one of these examples.
This error occurred only two words into a rather lengthy rant about how terrible it is that people aren’t using English and how English is going downhill. This particular error in this particular context is a lot like somebody standing up to give a speech on animal rights while wearing a fur coat. If you’re going to give this speech, you need to prove that you’re a good person to trust on matters of the English language, and this simple little grammatical error threw that all away.
However, this particular error isn’t the only thing of linguistic interest in this rant.
Official English sillyness
I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit when the author said that “in 10 years, we’ll all need to know Spanish and push 2 to hear it in English”. This is unrealistic for a number of reasons, but not the least of which is the assumption that the tide could turn in 10 years, in either direction.
I consider myself to be nearly fluent in Spanish. I suspect that, if dropped in the middle of Mexico City, I could likely survive quite well, albeit with the normal crop of grammatical errors. I’ve never lived abroad, although I’ve traveled to Spanish speaking countries on a few occasions and worked in a number of Spanish speaking environments. I’ve gotten this degree of language mastery the American way, by learning the language in isolation in classrooms from a young age. How long did this take? Roughly 8 years of Spanish through Middle school, High school, and College.
Now, keep in mind, I adore grammar. I love it. I truly enjoyed these classes, and didn’t particularly slack. It’s just that, well, getting good with a language takes time. Sure, it could be shortened with immersion classes and living abroad, but I’d like to think I’ve had a pretty average language education.
For me and my flexible young brain, it took me eight years. Just imagine if a monolingual fifty year old was “forced” to learn Spanish. According to Wikipedia, around 82% of people in the US speak English only at home. Even if an evil Spanish-speaking conspiracy literally forced everybody in the country to learn Spanish, it’d likely be at least 10 or 15 years before most people could use it as a primary language.
However, that’s not going to happen. An 82% majority doesn’t just drop their native language without a gun to their heads, especially when it would require years of expensive and difficult schooling. Not to mention that English is probably the fastest growing language in the world, and it’s a prestige-language for many.
So, I’m quite tempted to say that the author here is appealing to the “defend the fatherland” attack-when-threatened instincts of the masses, rather than to any sort of logic. These fear based arguments are (sadly) pretty common these days, but to a linguist, this one is just plain silly.
When it comes to sillyness, though, there’s one statement that takes the cake.
Enjoy your cooked circles of Freedom-Flour
In her little petition, the author proposes one of the most ridiculous ideas that I’ve heard in a while:
Petition to NOT modify our native language to include any foreign language
Whoa there, Mrs. Official English. This is a bit of a tall order, as forbidding any further borrowing of words from other languages is a bit ridiculous. As I’ve discussed before, English is ripe with borrowings from Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, and even Arabic.
So, to categorically forbid the borrowing of new words into English from other languages would be inconvenient and juvenile. We’d be forced to come up with new words for all the items we might absorb from other cultures. Thus, rather than being able to simply use the word “tortilla” (from Spanish), we’d have to come up with a new word for it. Perhaps we could just use a compound word (”Thin flour-bread”). Maybe we could just make a new, English-sounding word for it. Or, maybe we can take a page from the US House of Representatives’ playbook and come up with a nice, jingoistic name for them. I suggest “cooked circles of Freedom-Flour”.
However, even if we were to start creating English words for everything, it really wouldn’t help what she’s afraid of. As Shakespeare points out, a rose by any other name will smell just as sweet, and no matter what you call a new idea or item from another culture, it’ll still affect our own culture. Sure, you’ll avoid having any foreign words, but if you’re still importing foreign items into our society, I suspect she’d still think our culture was “in danger”.
So, sure, you could try and bind the language (impossible) in such a way that it won’t absorb foreign words (unfortunate), but really, all you’d be doing is halting the progress of English, and weakening the language. Really, if this author succeeded, she’d probably just end up hurting English and making other, less hogtied languages seem more attractive.
Relax, Breathe. Your English is safe
I’ve used this quote several times before, and I’ll use it again: A language user trying to prevent language change is like a gardener trying to prevent continental drift. Every time these official English people stand up and yell, it becomes more apparent that it’s completely futile. English is going to do precisely what it’s going to do, and all the ranting and cute little laws in the world aren’t going to change that.
Even disregarding that futility, the fact remains that English isn’t going anywhere. Sure, more and more, it’ll be beneficial to be bilingual. Barring major wars, though, I don’t think there are any Native English speakers alive right now in the US who will have to completely switch to another language to survive here within their lifetime. Sure, English will change, but it’s not going away any time soon.
So, why do they keep arguing these points? Well, as I’ve said before, when people say nasty things about another language, it’s generally because they want to say nasty things about the people who use it, but are afraid to do so. I suspect that this too is another little bit of anti-immigrant or even racist sentiment that’s been dressed up in a little suit and clip-on tie and paraded around as a linguistic issue. Luckily, there are people who oppose it (notably including Senator John McCain and the Mayor of Nashville), and the proponents of these ideas remain on the fringe.
Next time you hear one of these people pop up yelling about saving English from those mean, nasty other languages, take a second to realize that it’s a really a linguistic non-issue. Make up your own mind on the subject, but just make sure that you rip off the false linguistic premises. Only once you’ve done that will you be completely aware of exactly what this sort of argument and mindset is supporting.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Excellent article.
I do have to take exception to the idea that people who are afraid of immigration are necessarily racist. Could be, but it’s more likely that they are just comfortable with the way things are and are afraid of change.
July 13th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Fitzage, you raise a very good point, and re-reading it, I’ve got a bit of unintended meaning there. I’ll change the wording of the article to read “anti-immigrant or racist sentiment”, to try and diffuse some of that implication. Thanks :)
July 13th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Good step. I’d still also have to say that it may not even indicate an anti-immigrant stance as much as the stance that they would like what immigrants do come to integrate into society better.
The obviously go too far in what they think that means, but they aren’t necessarily anti-immigration. And anti-illegal-immigration isn’t at all the same thing.
July 13th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Fitzage, I agree in principle, but I think that this really is an anti-immigrant step.
Think about it, what immigrant, illegal or not, wouldn’t prefer to have perfect command of the dominant language, even if they’d rather speak their native language at home and in their community. I suspect that the trouble, and the reason that there are so many people with less-than-perfect command of English, is that it’s both difficult and expensive to learn English to fluency. I very highly doubt that these people don’t WANT to integrate linguistically, it’s just that in many cases, due to financial or schedule burdens, they’re unable to.
So, there are two options.
One would be to go out and start teaching English at steep discounts. Start (or expand) federal programs to aid people in learning English, compensate people for the time lost at English lessons where they could be working, and even just make transitional, bi-lingual government publications to ease people into it.
The other, is to write congressional legislation to effectively say “Your language is no longer equal to ours. We won’t speak it to you, and you shouldn’t speak it to us. If you want to be welcome in America, get learning our language, but until you speak it, you’re not really an American.”. This doesn’t help anybody, it doesn’t add any motivation, and it certainly won’t get people learning English any more quickly. Official English legislation, in my mind, is simply a symbolic slap in the face of people who haven’t yet learned English.
If you like Immigrants, and would like them to stick around, but to integrate linguistically, then support the former, educational methods, as it’ll accomplish what you want. You can be pro-immigration, but against people staying Linguistically isolated, and these sorts of methods are a good way of doing so.
If you’d rather just send a big, fat, “you’re not welcome” message, then Official English legislation is your best bet. Exclusion is its sole purpose. In my mind, you cannot support these sorts of Official English bills while still claiming to support immigration from non English-speaking countries.
Perhaps my views are unique, and the preceding is my opinion alone, but that’s my view. Hope you find it interesting, Fitz. Thanks again for the comments.
July 13th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I agree.
My point, however, is that this particular person and people with similarly extreme views just don’t understand that their view makes no sense. They may very well have nothing against immigration, but don’t realize that their proposals don’t fit with that.
It could go either way, I just don’t think it necessitates a stance against immigration in general.
July 13th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Hi.
I recall a slogan: “If it’s not worth saying in English, then it’s not worth saying at all!” Such efforts are, in my opinion, very much mislead.
In an Old Norwegian book named Konungs Skuggsjá the father explains to the son: “oc æf þu villt værða fullkomenn í froðleic, þa næmðu allar mallyzkur en allra hælz latinu og walsku, þviat þær tungur ganga wiðazt en þo tynþu æigi at hældr þinni tungo.”
An Englishman translated this to English in 1917: “And if you wish to become perfect in knowledge, you must learn all the languages, first of all Latin and French, for these idioms are most widely used; and yet, do not neglect your native tongue or speech.”
I wanted to say this first, and then I wanted to say that I vehemently disagree with your statement about the futility of preventing, hrm, undesirable changes to the language.
I disagree, for my native tongue has seen a lot of such changes prevented (and in some cases reversed, after passing over the nation for over a few hundred years), and vehemently because I think that throwing up your arms like that is defeatist and damaging to the cause.
And besides, dear linguist, does it not frustrate you to see Modern English without the multiple cases of Old English? The mongrel-vocabulary is unimportant, I think, but at least you should try to preserve the syntax, for if that gets kicked around too much then at least I will find English to be very, hrm, “rudis indigestaque moles”?
The idea of language conservation/preservation is silly, for a language should be a useful servant and not an unyielding master, but still: Time you spend on mocking such opinions is time better spent bemoaning lost morphology.
Although both a waste of time. Stop writing such articles, I say, and pick up your book of Old English. At least pick up such a book rather, if you are thinking about replying to this and me.
Neatly written article though.
Kv, U.
P.S. Native Icelander.
July 13th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
While I am far from impressed by the petitioner’s grammar or ability to communicate her ideas, I think you may have misinterpreted her point.
I interpreted her petition to mean she wants the list of national languages of the United States to stop at one, English, and have no others added. I do not believe she was taking any position on the fact that the English language has incorporated words from other languages.
I could be wrong, but I am aware of a movement to make English the sole official language of the U.S., and I am not aware of a movement to prohibit the incorporation into English of foreign words. So I assume the petitioner holds the former position.
July 16th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
The pervasive use of ampersand and the like is modifying English already.
July 18th, 2007 at 12:14 am
When my grandfather died, and we were going through his things, we found some old family papers in German. My sister and I, who took German in college, were the only ones in the family who could read them. My grandfather certainly couldn’t have.
On the one hand, it’s sad that our family lost this bit of its heritage. On the other hand, it’s sad that my great grandparents lived in relative cultural isolation and a happy thing that my grandfather escaped it to become fairly successful.
Today, I work in one of those language schools that provides native-speaking teachers. One of the most saddening, and maddening aspects of the job is knowing bright, vibrant people whose lack of English keeps them stuck in a dead end job at our school when they should be out changing the world.
When a large international corporation sends an exec to America, English lessons are high on the agenda. This is because the company is highly invested in his or her success in American business and life. We obviously can’t do as much for all the new arrivals who lack corporate sponsorship. But we should understand, clear-eyed, that the ideal is not finding a way to print enough government documents and foster enough ethnic neighborhoods so that people can survive without English, but to maximize everyone’s ability to participate in a society whose look, feel and understanding of itself is shaped by the primary language it uses for communication.
I’m not sure how I feel about the Official English movement. I don’t think English needs protection from immigrants. But I do think immigrants need protection from a society that is too willing to let them languish in second-class citizenship while engaging in magical thinking about how life in the barrios, the Chinatowns and the Japanese and Korean neighborhoods is multicultural and diverse, not monocultural and restrictive of access to the American dream. For English speakers who know a bit of a foreign language or two, these enclaves provide for multicultural experiences. We should be doing our best to allow immigrants similar opportunities to enjoy the multicultural life by placing a higher emphasis on helping them learn enough English to go back and forth between cultures as well. I don’t think this is quite what the Official English people had in mind, though I could be wrong.
July 18th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
You started your article out by saying you do your best not to mock people for grammatical mistakes. I would agree that you tried your best not to mock the woman, preferring instead to slander her beliefs and her intentions. By the end of your critique, she was not only a poor representative of the English language, but she was also a conniving racist, with beliefs that have no place in the heads of intelligent and conscientious people. Some of the other bloggers have made some thoughtful suggestions and observations, such as Will’s entry and that of Joshua, just to mention two. There is one other small thing I would like to point out to you. The woman speaks English well. The mistakes of which you made issue reveal you as a purist… at least in the case when you have a gripe against someone else’s philosophy. A few grammatical mistakes do not disqualify one from speaking about their native language. I’m not saying you have no right to feel personally offended by this woman’s ideas. But you start your post in mild criticism then go way off the deep end by the conclusion, and are as guilty as you accuse her of being opinionated. If you’re going to go after her jugular, be consistent, and make that clear from the beginning. I don’t agree with certain points that either she or you made. Neither of you are oracles. Her 10 year prediction and your counter are pretty silly in my view. The point isn’t where we’ll be in 10, 20, 50 years from now, but where we are in the present. The linguistic issues that affect us currently, are those that will lead to the future. “Everything will work out in the end” addresses nothing. But this non-action will insure consequences in the future. On closing, your cooked circles of freedom-flour was hilarious. I’d suggest pouring some of that creative energy into looking more openly at yourself and your imagined enemies.
July 19th, 2007 at 4:57 am
You say
> around 82% of people in the US speak English only at home
Really!? That’s gobsmacking.
Or do you mean `speak only English at home’? Heh.
I wonder if there are any circumstances where a language would be spoken by a majority at home but by a minority in public.
I agree that this is indeed one of the more embarrassing places for someone to make any sort of grammatical error — how to shoot yourself in the foot in public.
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 am
Norman,
Very nice catch of the misplaced modifier there. I did, in fact, mean to say that 82% of people in the US speak only English at home. Perhaps I should be minding my grammar a little more if I’m going to be posting about such subjects.
Thanks for keeping me in line!
Speechless Parrot,
First, the reason I brought the grammar up in the first place was to point out a deviation from my normal policy that grammar mistakes are completely irrelevant. in these situations, fair or not, making grammar mistakes can damage one’s ethos (as I’m sure that anybody who noticed the misplaced modifier my my reply realized). In the same way that one conceivably could give an incredible and sincere speech about animal rights while wearing a fur coat, one can certainly discuss the purity of a language while making grammatical errors left and right. Whether or not it’s just, often, in these situations, people will judge based on grammar, but when you’re writing about something like this, it gives people extra motivation to find issues. Something as glaring as a You’re/Your switch will not go unnoticed, and will not help your argument.
However, this wasn’t meant to be a part of my criticism of this argument. Perhaps I could have split it off into a different post. In one, I could have discussed the occasional import of orthodox grammar, and the other would be reserved for, as you put it, “going for the jugular” of her argument and point-of-view. I’d hoped that was clear, but apparently it wasn’t.
My other point of reply is that I’ve realized that I’ve failed to mention those people who support English-Only sorts of programs not due to Racism or Anti-Immigrant sentiment, but due to a genuine (albeit flawed) belief that English is in danger. Perhaps the author of the quoted article is truly concerned for the future of English and is making suggestions on how to protect it, even though she really has no problem with immigrants or speakers of other languages. In fact, I’d even like to believe that to be the case.
The point of the final few paragraphs was to point out that, at the end of the day, no matter one’s thoughts or motivations, these sorts of suggestions and legislative actions do nothing but exclude other people based on their language group. Whether a person’s reason for pushing these ideas is racism, anti-immigrant sentiment, or even erroneous fear for our language, arguing such things is still discriminatory and exclusive. These people have freedom to make these arguments, but I just hope that other people will feel free to refute them and expose their destructive consequences.
Finally, I’m glad you enjoyed the Freedom-Flour. Thanks for commenting.
Will
September 8th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Relax, Breathe. Your English is safe
On closing, your cooked circles of freedom-flour was hilarious. I’d suggest pouring some of that creative energy into looking more openly at yourself and your imagined enemies.
December 8th, 2007 at 3:06 am
I came upon your site while searching for a definitive answer to the correct use and differences between ‘pretty’, ‘fairly’, ‘quite’ and ‘rather’… instead, I get a political activist masquerading as a grammarian. I tend to agree with most of your opinions, but if you wish to be a social blogger, I suggest you clearly and unambiguiosly do so, rather than billing yourself as someone who can provide answers to serious grammatical questions.
December 14th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Ken,
Note the “Tirades” tag. If you’d like to view only the serious (or semi-serious) language posts, I’d suggest you skip over any post with “tirades” in it. As the category description states, any thusly tagged post contains large doses of personal (and often political) opinion, in addition to any discussion of language.
I encourage you to look around the site a bit more and see the more linguistically oriented posts. I hope that you’d find that the majority of this site can (and does) provide answers to grammatical questions with the sort of accuracy one might expect from a scholarly resource, and that although you’ve stumbled upon a post in which language necessarily mixes with politics, I am capable of providing information as well.
Also, as always, I’d never object to your leaving another comment explaining some of your objections to my policy, as Speechless Parrot and Ufaikr have done above. I’d be interested to hear why you disagree, and commenting should be open indefinitely so that we can keep a dialogue going.
Thanks for your feedback, and I do hope that you’ll have a look around.
Will
December 22nd, 2007 at 1:00 am
Will,
OK, you’ve dragged this innocent into the fray! I will definitely have a look around the rest of the site for answers to my original question, but I must say that I am left more than a little perplexed by your statements about my having “objections to your policy” and ask me to explain “why I disagree”. Objections to what policy? Did I say I disagree? If you read my comment again the only thing I said related to agreeing/disagreeing was “I tend to agree with most of your opinions”. So, are you just looking for a fight or what?
Ken